An exercise in perception – would this get you riled?

Now here’s a pretty funny thing that happened at the gym this weekend. There is a room in the back of the gym that is contained by a glass partition and is an area separate from the gym floor. It is called the TRX room to some of us because there is a TRX cable unit which you can use for squats, pull ups. But that is a separate discussion for another day. My point is there is a separate area in the back that is not part of the main gym floor.

In this room are for seated cardio machines Two of which are hand bikes, which were the only ones that I could use when my leg and foot were unable to support me standing or cardio, and there are a number of machines that I use, that are more in private and are separated from the main gym floor.

The main walkway in this room is right behind the two cardio machines. It is used by anybody that comes into the room from the main gym floor.

I was seated on the ad machine facing this walkway, when I saw something I never had before. A woman was talking to somebody on a cell phone, but she was placing playing cards and stacks of three along this walkway. She had a rubber band around her thighs to provide extra tension on her our hips, not that you need to know that for the story, but she was pretty involved in squatting down and picking up a card laughing into her phone and obviously somebody was on it talking to her and watching.

I watched her as I was doing my abs on this machine, and she did the whole world. She must’ve been there for about a good five minutes. This was just doing one set. She proceeded to get up and move over to the machine next to her while leaving all of these cards along the center of the floor.

Now my attention shifted to other people watching this either shrugging their shoulders or shoving away in anger, which one gentleman did as he threw something into the garbage can and started mumbling to himself. When I was finished with my abs, he passed by me and I felt compelled to ask him what are we playing today. What’s your game of choice? I wanted to make a conversation about it because I knew this guy and I didn’t want him to be upset by this whole thing. It was interesting to me how he was taking it personally and someone was taking an attack on his valuable gym floor.

It was more fun to watch people watching her then it was to actually watch her doing this never seen before exercise at the gym. I asked another member who I know what was his game of choice? He said none. It’s going to make us degenerate gamblers. So there was my new view on the situation.

Another gentleman who sat next to me on the hand bike that I proceeded to use said that his game was bridge. He didn’t seem angry about the situation, and was an older gentleman just kind of laughing it off.

I share the story because as I learn more about emotional intelligence, and read hacking happiness by Sean Webb, it’s really changing my perspective on how you can change your own perspective on things that happen around you. You can make a choice every day about every little thing that happens in your world. Are you going to get frustrated about it, take it as a personal attack, or just put it in perspective and laugh about it. There might be some things that you can laugh about, but in the moment when you need to get up and go, there is no other way to be your best.

Are used to get checked up every little thing that would happen to me or in my environment, that I would let it frustrate me. With MS, it physically affects me. So the more that I take a look at the big view of what’s happening, it affects me less. There is still work to do, but it’s a start. And this was a hilarious way to practice!